A dental appointment is rarely regarded as an enjoyable experience. Irrespective of whether one visits the dentist for a routine check-up such as a teeth cleaning or a more complicated procedure, the experience is often dreaded. This sentiment is shared by many adults and children alike who tend to view dental appointments as a mild form of torture, featuring medical instruments such as probes, forceps, pliers and drills.
In order to alleviate these anxieties, dentists, hygentists and other dental-care professionals do their best to relieve the nagging sense of general discomfort patients feel. These days, dentists will try just about anything to ease a patient's pain and distract the patient from the procedure at hand, including performing magic tricks. Industry professionals are also exploring ways of performing more comfortable procedures which require less intimidating medical instruments.
Throughout most of the duration of one's visit in the dental chair, it is necessary for the patient to keep his/her mouth in an open position to permit the dentist to have access to the patient's teeth. This can become quite an arduous task during prolonged dental procedures. In the past, dentists have employed rubber inserts which are wedged between the patient's upper and lower rows of teeth to force the mouth open. Until removal or repositioning of the inserts, however, the patient is unable to close his/her mouth, even when the dentist isn't working on the patient's teeth. The patient begins to feel helpless due to this lack of control over jaw movement. This is often psychologically distressing.
It is also not uncommon for the patient's jaws to become quite sore as a result of muscle stress which is exacerbated by the patient's tendency to clench the jaws while dental work is being performed. This is in part derived from the fact that jaw muscles are bio-functional for having strength in closing the mouth as opposed to opening the mouth. Inevitably, the patient's mouth has a tendency to return to its normally closed position to relieve stress on the jaw muscles for over-extended periods of opening. Unfortunately, this interferes with the dentist's access to the patient's mouth and can complicate the dental procedure or even result in unnecessary injury to the patient.
To date there are no known devices which assist the patient in controlling the open position of his/her jaw during dental work. Accordingly, there remains a need to provide such a device which accomplishes this and which also provides a source of distraction for the patient during dental work. The present invention is directed to meeting these needs, among others.